Monday, August 23, 2010

I love zoos. I’m the first to suggest we visit a zoo on any trip anywhere in the world. Of course, the better the enclosures and the more life like the animal’s environs the better an experience it is for me to go along.

While in Santiago, Chile recently I was warned off going to the local zoo by almost everyone that I spoke to. Usually this would be enough for me not to go, but for some reason I found myself hiking up the hill towards the central zoo

In fairness, it didn’t look to be one of the best-funded zoos I’d ever been to (I’m spoiled by being a regular visitor to Melbourne’s amazing zoo) but I enjoyed my initial walk around and found some great local animals that were really interesting.

As we progressed we found an enclosure that housed macaws and turtles. Only one of the turtles had met with a seemingly untimely fate. It had slid down an enclosure bank, landed on it’s back and now each of its four legs and it’s tiny head and neck were lolling out, unmoving. I gasped at the sight of this poor little turtle, upside down and expired.

I wasn’t the only one who had gasped apparently as about 15 minutes later a zoo worker approached the enclosure. He was probably mid 40’s, a manly looking type in a brown zoo uniform. He entered the enclosure, picked up the turtle, inspected it and then did something fantastic.

He kissed the turtle, placed it right side up and off it wandered to resume it’s life.

The kiss was unexpected. It wasn’t for show. It was a heartfelt gesture from a zoo worker who clearly loved these animals.

I was the only person to my knowledge who saw the kiss, but I knew then instantly that regardless of how well funded the zoo was, there were people here who cared passionately.

If someone watched you do your job on a daily basis – would they get the same impression?

Monday, August 16, 2010

I’ll admit it without shame, I love the classic 80’s television show “Cheers”.

One of my favourite characters is Woody, the lovable, if a bit dopey bar tender.

In a recently watched episode Woody was asked how an acting audition of his had gone. “Excellent” he remarked, he’d said his lines faster than anybody else auditioning!

This made me laugh but also made me think back to some of my early mistakes in the workplace and to some that I’ve seen others make – with the best intentions of course.

So clearly, we can learn from Woody that faster isn’t always better. But then, in my opinion, slow perfectionism doesn’t overly benefit a workplace either. The real challenge is to find that happy medium between perfection and speed. Everyone finds it at different levels. For me – I work on about an 80 / 20 rule – get it 80% right and get it working and adjust, perfect and tweak as you go. That level works for me because I know it’ll take me at least twice as long to get something from 80% to 90% perfect without working on / in it as it will do if I get in there and adjust as I go.

For example, at Elephant Property, when a new tenant moves into a property there’s a very detailed 2 page checklist that we fill out in office which shows everything that we need to do prior to the tenant being given keys (and after!) This checklist started out as a single A4 page 18 months ago and has morphed and been added to and improved incrementally over time. Had I tried to get it to it’s current stage 18 months ago it would been impossible because I wouldn’t have learnt the lessons I know now. Could I have gotten it better before we’d started using it? Absolutely. But at what time cost?

Sure perfectionism has a place – but before you waste hours of productive time striving for perfection in everything, ask yourself if in this instance you’ll get closer to perfect by getting in and working with and on the project rather than just designing or conceptualizing.